The invention relates to an apparatus for feeding bulk material, such as sand, into a cable or conduit ditch.
In connection with the installation of cables and conduits in a ditch it is customary to protect the cables and conduits by first placing a layer of sand onto the bottom of the ditch. Thereafter, the cable and/or conduits are installed and subsequently a further layer of sand is placed onto the conduits and/or cables prior to the final filling of the ditch.
The placing of the cables and/or conduits in a body of sand protects these cables and/or conduits. However, in order to keep the installation or placing costs at an economically reasonable price, the use of sand is optimized by using just such a body of sand as is sufficient for achieving the desired protection. This aim requires to achieve a predetermined thickness of the body of sand in which the cables and/or conduits are embedded. Heretofore it was customary to manually distribute the sand in the ditch in order to achieve the desired thickness. Such manual sand distribution in a ditch is not only labor intensive, it also requires a substantial length of time and such manual labor requires a certain strength, especially due to the small space available in the narrow ditch which limits the movability of a person performing such work. In very narrow ditches a long handled shovel was necessary for this work so that a laborer could stand above the ditch and distribute the sand at the bottom of the ditch. Another disadvantage of the prior art manual sand distribution at the bottom of a narrow ditch is seen in that certain cables and conduits are rather sensitive to external damage. This applies, for example, to glass fiber cables which are very sensitive to breaking and thus could be damaged when the sand is distributed with a shovel. Thus, it was necessary heretofore to strictly make sure that nobody stepped on such a cable and that nobody damaged it. In fact, it was even necessary not to expose such cables to any excessive stress.